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The Chilli Black Vulture is the latest hybrid shortboard from the hands of James Cheal. This model features a similar wide point forward outline of Chilli’s popular “Rare Bird” combined with a slightly wider bump wing swallow tail to increase lift and speed in average surf. The result is a performance-oriented hybrid for plenty of skate across the flats, with thin rails and rocker for driving vertical lines.

What We Like

We surfed our Chilli Black Vulture in Cape Hatteras and Mainland Mexico, in peaky beachbreaks and long, drawn out points. This board is at home in either of these conditions and has the ability to skate across flat sections, but also hold a rail in steep waves and vertical driving turns.

The Black Vulture has a fuller nose outline with flattish entry rocker when compared with standard shortboard. This makes paddling this board super easy, even without excessive volume. The wider nose and overall outline, combined with the flatter entry rocker, translate well into added skate and glide across flat spots while making sections. When you need to get going fast, the Black Vulture can really light up the speed and make sections most boards can’t. Like the Chilli Pretty Sweet, the Black Vulture has a thinner rail profile that makes all of this extra speed controllable (and rippable!) in the turns.

While the forward half of the board has a relaxed rocker, the back half of the board has a bump wing in the outline combined with a bit of kick in the rocker out the tail. These two design details give the Black Vulture a powerful, vertical turn off the bottom of the wave. This hook is addictive, especially when combined with all the speed the Black Vulture can generate.

Unless you’re an advanced to pro level surfer, the Chilli Black Vulture isn’t a true groveler, but it does make the perfect “one up” right above a groveler in your quiver. The Black Vulture can also be used as a daily driver in your quiver since it can be surfed at a high level through the entire mid range of surf, and does have a solid small wave game. If you were looking at traveling to a spot with small to medium size waves and clean shape, this would be an incredible travel board to take along with you. Lastly, if you find most high performance shortboards finicky to surf and are looking for something high performance, but with a touch more nose area, width and paddle power, the Chilli Black Vulture is what you’re looking for. The Chilli Black Vulture excels in thigh high to overhead surf.

Chilli adds a lot of unique details that come standard with every board rather than up-charging for each. These include inegra reinforcement strips on the bottom of the Black Vulture, a carbon tail patch, and a custom Futures/Chilli leash plug. The black strand of fiberglass running lengthwise down every Chilli surfboard is a Chilli signature strip, making it easy to identify Chilli’s at a glance.

Why You Want a Chilli Black Vulture

You’re looking for a daily driver hybrid surfboard that has plenty of speed and skate, while still retaining control and solid, vertical turning ability. The Chilli Black Vulture flies down the line and rips committed turns on rail.

Chilli Description:

The Black Vulture is our newest model that team rider Lee Wilson put to the test. Lee fell in love with his 5'5" Black Vulture and claims its one of the fastest boards he has ever ridden. Lets break it down:

The Black Vulture has a fuller nose, added foam under the chest and a wider outline. The wide point is a little further forward too, giving it great foam under the chest and front foot when your surfing, also making it a wave catching machine (much similar foam distribution to the Rare Bird). We then gave it a bump swallow tail to pull the tail in and give it drive. Combined with a single concave to vee out through the tail. Resulting in a wave catching machine that turns on a dime.

We recommend riding it the same or slightly shorter than the Rare Bird, or your desired volume.

Our team has surfed it as a twin w/ center stabilizer and with a traditional thruster set up and found gold in both.